Transceiver modules are well known for providing data communication solutions for data center hardware, such as routers, hubs, servers, or other high-speed data communication systems. Many of pluggable transceiver modules are known such as 1000 BASE-X/T fast Ethernet copper and optical modules. An individual transceiver module may be inserted or removed from a hardware host device when additional capacity is needed, or upgrading of the system, for example from copper to optical. Commonly known form factors for such transceiver modules include SFP, SFP+, CXP, or QSFP.
The host devices that receive these transceiver modules may have as many as sixty-four receptacle ports for receiving individual transceiver modules therein. In many applications, a metallic EMI cage will be provided on the mother board of the host device for receiving each of the individual transceiver modules in the receptacle cage.
Other systems are known for allowing individual transceiver modules to be mated in a single cage having multiple ports. For example, a multi-port receptacle system, including a monolithic cage for mounting on the mother board of a host device is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,275,959, which is incorporated herein by reference. FIG. 1 depicts such a multi-port receptacle having four individual transceiver modules, 10, 20, 30, 40 received in cage 50. The first transceiver module 10 is shown being inserted into the open receptacle port channel of the cage 50. Because each of the four transceiver modules 10, 20, 30, 40 are independent and have separate housings for each channel, they must each be plugged into the cage 50 in a separate mating process. So, for example, where a host device has as many as sixty-four channels, it will require the operator in the field to install sixty-four separate transceiver modules using sixty-four separate insertion steps. In a rack which may hold as many as eight host devices, these insertion steps of the individual transceiver modules can be extremely time consuming and cumbersome. Also to be considered, is that a full data center may have multiple racks that must be populated with the transceiver modules—multiplying the task to thousands of insertion steps. It would be desirable to provide a module that reduces the number of insertion steps and allows for host devices to be populated more quickly and easily by field operators.